Helen Mirren tells a group of drummers to “shut the f*ck up”

How cool is Helen Mirren? The veteran actress, dressed as The Queen, was performing on a London production when she stormed off stage and told a bunch of drummers to “shut the f*ck up.” The incident occurred while Mirren was performing as the Queen on The Audience stage and the noise of the drummers outside disturbed the end of the first half. The 67-year-old actress reportedly run to the stage door at the interval, grabbed the conductor’s arm and yelled at the band to “shut the f*** up”. Mirren explained:

“I’m afraid there were a few ‘thespian’ words used. They got a very stern royal ticking off but I have to say they were very sweet and they stopped immediately. I felt rotten but on the other hand they were destroying our performance so something had to be done. The drumming just slowly got louder and louder and then settled right outside the stage door. There was just a thin wall between drumming and the theatre so it was unbelievably loud on stage. Paul Ritter and I could hardly hear each other speak and the audience couldn’t hear us speak at all … I literally walked straight off stage, straight up the stairs and straight out the stage door and banged my way through the crowd who were watching and said ‘stop, you’ve got to stop right now’ only I might have used stronger language than that.”

Helen did appreciate how the drummers reacted to her outburst. She said: “They were very sweet and stopped the minute they knew I wasn’t just a batty old woman haranguing them on the streets of Soho on a Saturday night.”

The parade organizer Mark McKenzie said of the incident: “Not much shocks you on the gay scene. But seeing Helen Mirren dressed as the Queen cussing and swearing and making you stop your parade – that’s a new one.”

After it got quiet, a power failure interrupted the performance, to which Mirren said to the audience: “We seem to be having a bit of a bad night.” But the audience gave her a standing ovation instead.